The Hallmarks of a Good Life

My anxiety has been through the roof today. I wish I could pinpoint a reason as to why...maybe it is just because I am learning how to slowly deal with living this new "normal". I feel lost, like I don't know what my next move is or what I should do with my day. Little man has been sick so that took away from teaching today. If I could just restore my energy enough to cook like I used to. I need my life to feel as though it has more meaning than what it does, and believe me, I know that I am needed, I guess I just do not feel as needed as I did when I was the one putting the food on the table. Not being able to work has really taken its toll on my emotional well-being. I am basically learning how to live again. And it sucks. I have to rely on more people than I ever have in my lifetime. I am better than that but there is nothing, absolutely nothing I can do to rectify this situation.

My twelve year old seems to have things figured out better than I do. When I was in the hospital, I was honest with him and told him that mama was getting sicker. He replied, "Mama, you aren't gone yet." I gave him a giant hug then, marveling at this child who in other contexts acts like any other twelve year old, but when I need him emotionally, he becomes a sage and speaks as though he has lived before, as if in some part of his bottomless soul he remembers the lessons he learned from a previous life.

When I spent some time consulting with Dr. Childress, I have largely heeded my child's advice which was basically to live and not die before I am dead. To me, dealing with all of my illnesses is all about a way to figure out how to live longer. It is not living. In some ways, it's actually a waste of my precious and limited time and interferes with living. I try to do as little of it as possible. Dr. Childress commented on just how smart my children are. I happen to agree.

Living is actually quite all-consuming when you live with zest and joy and commitment. It's made it difficult for me to find the time to even write, which for me is a quintessential part of living.

I have become more tired than I ever have before. Of course, my doctors told me this would happen. It goes hand in hand with less oxygen and your lungs suffocating you and all. I have not taken a nap in the past two days because I have done my best to fight sleep...to stay awake for the kids. I have even put on make-up which is a huge accomplishment for me lately.

In many retrospects, I have fulfilled the American Dream. I married my best friend,gave birth to three amazing children, and have been loved more than any one woman could ever deserve to be loved in her entire lifetime. These are all vestiges of a good life, one with which anyone would ever want.

But, then there's the cancer and the IPF, which has the power to destroy a good life, to steal the joy, the gratification and success that came with that good life. Sometimes, it makes me feel diminished, a lesser person, a person who was forced to give up her career, a person whose body has aged beyond her years, a distracted and tormented person who is now less of a mother and wife, a person who can no longer live with the abandon that she once took for granted. Two years after having to give it all up, I still grieve at the loss.

I wonder how much more diminution I can withstand, especially when all the drugs are raging inside of me, causing the uncontrollable thrush, the fatigue that makes me fall asleep whenever, the pain in my hands and feet, and the scabs that constantly bleed on top of my head from the steroids.

All my life, I've felt lesser than I could have been because of cruel fates. For an overachiever like me, the thought of being lesser is very painful. It took me some 30 years to find a modicum of peace with the perpetual feeling of being less than I could have been. And now the cruel fates have sought to bombard me once again. How much more degradation of my body can I tolerate? How much longer can I live a life that feels that much more diminished and no longer “good”?

Time. Despite all my bitching and complaining about the loss of the life and body that once was, I still want time. I want to live this life that has been gifted to me. Not because I think Kevin and my kids need me because regardless of what they may say or think, they don’t need me. They will go on in my absence and I know they will flourish and thrive, even if it may take a while. But I want to be here because even though I may think differently while in the throes of treatment, I still have a good life, a life worth being proud of, a life worth living. Sometimes, I just need to be reminded of all the goodness in my life.

The complicated truth is that incurable cancer and IPF has destroyed my good life in certain respects and has taken much from me. There can be no denying this nor cancer’s power. But it has also augmented my life and made me a better mother, wife, daughter and person in other respects. It has made me more contemplative – this blog is evidence of that fact – and therefore smarter. It has forced me to see the beauty that surrounds me. So perhaps, in the final analysis, when one weighs out the havoc cancer and IPF has wreaked and will continue to wreak, on the one hand, against all that it has taught and given to me, on the other hand, I still come out ahead, better and greater than I might have been, my good life, forever altered but still intact.

When everything is said and done, I ask that all who read and will read this blog and all who know me judge the worthiness and value of my life, whether it was good or bad, based not on the number of days I was on this earth, but rather by how I chose to live and by all that I achieved and produced in my relatively short life. When prompted in a speech class in high school to speak about whether I would choose a life of tremendous successes and tremendous failures versus a more even keeled life, I chose the former and what I chose was given to me. Even as I face my mortality at a premature age, I would make that same choice again and again. I have always believed – and neither cancer nor IPF has not nor will not change this – that a life worth living is one imbued with both success and failure, joy and sorrow, relief and suffering, but above all, it must be lived with purpose, passion and courage to not wallow in mediocrity or toil in a pointless job or endure a loveless marriage, but to venture forth and explore the unknown world and enrich the mind and soul, to love completely, to laugh, to embrace wholeheartedly all that life has to offer whether it be glorious or horrendous. These are to me the hallmarks of a good life and the criteria by which I wish my life to be judged.

Love you all...truly mean it and God loves you too,

Shanna xoxoxo

LUNGevity National Hope Summit: I'm participating in an event to raise money to fight lung cancer—and I need your help!
I'm planning to attend LUNGevity Foundation's National HOPE Summit in Washington, DC, in May - it's a special conference just for lung cancer survivors like me. If I can raise $1000 or more in donations, LUNGevity will cover my travel expenses, including US round-trip transportation and hotel accommodations.
Proceeds from this fundraiser will benefit LUNGevity Foundation, the leading private provider of research funding for lung cancer. LUNGevity Foundation is firmly committed to making an immediate impact on increasing quality of life and survivorship of people with lung cancer by accelerating research into early detection and more effective treatments, as well as providing community, support, and education for all those affected by the disease.
Please join me in my efforts to stop lung cancer—the leading cancer killer—now!
http://lungevity.donordrive.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.participant&participantID=15728
Official prayer warrior page for my fight against lung cancer: facebook.com/hope4shanna

Official blog Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/shannabananahealthandfitness

My Go Fund Me Page (any and all donations will help with my medical funds)gofundme.com/hope4shanna2016